Not as deep as before, but there is still some shovel work required. We understand it’s winter and yet days under gray sky seem more numerous this year than any in the past.
Getting ready to hit the water
We don’t lament the inevitable and in fact look forward to a seasonal shift. It has been common in Central Oregon for snowy winter days to be followed by sun and blue sky. Usually in equal amounts.
Not this year.
The week didn’t start with snow on the ground. Mid-February started with a spring-like feel.
Snack time
It’s referred to as false spring, but regardless, we took advantage and headed to Maupin to spend the day on the Deschutes.
Rivers remain swollen from January’s melted snows so the fishing wasn’t great.
A mid-February day on the Deschutes
However, the day was sunny and temperatures pushed into the fifties. We sat up chairs on river’s edge, enjoyed the day and waited for winter to return.
Nor does it look like it will next week. Lots of gray days meant we got house projects done. Luckily, we managed to work in a day trip over to Summer Lake.
We took advantage of a break in the weather and headed over to the wildlife refuge.
In the winter the highlight is swans, who typically spend the season at the refuge. We had a nice chat with the local Fish, & Wildlife ranger who pointed out that both Trumpeter and Tundra swans swim together.
The view southeast to Paisley and Abert Rim is crowned with an azure sky.
It was a “summer” like day with no one around. We got lots of footage and watched the swans paddling around.
So far . . . another atmospheric river moved through the Pacific Northwest. Any snow we got last week is now mostly gone.
We had a surprise visitor this week.
Frequently we see deer, birds, chipmunks and cats moving through our outdoor spaces. To our amazement we saw a fox scoping things out, then scampering away. So cool.
With inclement weather the majority of our time this week was spent on kitchen projects.
Fire roasted pizza is the best.Juicing fruit
We’ve been perfecting our pizza dough and sauce and we’re finally getting around to processing all those pounds of fruit and berries we froze last summer.
We usually put off canning during the heat of summer and schedule most projects during the colder months.
This has become a standard winter activity, especially when the weather isn’t conducive to excursions.
Lemon syrup
Apple juice
Added to this year’s preserving, we are trying small batches of fruit juice and syrups. These are delicious poured over a scoop of yogurt or ice cream. They are also great for refreshing spritzer drinks and used to sweeten sauces.
Ft Rock … an amazing geological structure
We did manage an afternoon jaunt to Fort Rock , , , mostly just to get out of the house. We had a great walk and managed to view some soaring hawks. It was so quiet and we had the road to ourselves. Heaven!
Spent a couple of days trying to recover drone footage that mysteriously disappeared from the camera card.
Gave up . . . so you get JQ’s fun stroll footage. The cloud cover offered excellent backgrounds.
In all it was a great day jammed into the middle of a good week.
So, now we have to wait and see what the weather brings next week. At this point it seems the outlook could be anything.
This week we got caught up in a Pacific Northwest winter storm.
At least once a year an arctic front rides the jet stream over a rainstorm and turns Portland’s streets to skating rinks.
. . . are you seeing this?
Trouble is , , , this storm was an Atmospheric River and the jetstream turned on some gale force winds.
On our side of the mountains, the ice storm was minimal, but we did get three feet of snow to go along with the freeze. It pretty much closed down the whole Pacific Northwest for nearly a week.
There IS a whole deck chair under there
Only a few days ago the gas stations and grocery stores around us were still waiting on trucks from PDX to re-supply.
“Out of fuel” signs were common and empty grocery shelves were another casualty .
Inevitably these cold snaps are followed by warming and an accompanying slush and flood cycle.
Unlike many, our neighborhood did not experience any power outages.
The worst of it was the numerous snow shoveling excursions as we attempted to keep ahead of the accumulation.
In the end, we had shoulder-high berms on either side of the driveway.
We don’t require daily access to the transportation system and are quite content to stay at home.
As we write this post the view out our window is more springlike rather than a winter scape.
With all this “stay at home” time, we hit our reading lists pretty hard and finished up some fly tying.
We finally ventured out and managed to top off our supplies (including a trip to See’s Chocolates),
But most importantly, we headed to the Crooked and had a walk along the river. . . . We may have been experiencing a little cabin fever.
excited
joyous
grateful
content
Yeah, so hearing the river and being outdoors again was just what we needed.
We tested some new recipes and cooked and baked quite a bit . . .
Crispy Oatmeal Cookies, a staple in this household
Butter Chicken
Apricot Jam Crumbles
Freezer Hashbrowns
Tried Indian Butter Chicken and got numerous canning and freezing projects shelved.
The weather report calls for more mild rainy days, so it looks like we’ll have time to get ahead on our reading and do some more recipe testing while we wait for this ‘El Nino’ to move on.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in bowl.
Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter and both sugars at medium low speed to medium and continue to beat until pale and fluffy, about 1 minute. Scrape down bowl as needed.
Add egg and vanilla extract and beat on medium low until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture, and mix until just incorporated and smooth, about 10 seconds. With mixer running, gradually add oats and mix until well incorporated, about 20 seconds. Give dough final stir by hand to ensure that no flour pockets remain and ingredients are evenly distributed.
Working with 2 tablespoons of dough at a time, roll into balls and space them 2 1/2 inches apart on prepared sheets. Bake 1 sheet at a time, until cookies are golden brown and crispy on the edges. Let cookies cool on wire rack.
Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani Indian Butter Chicken)
Ingredients
MARINADE
3poundschicken breasts
1/2 cup Plain Greek Yogurt
1 1/2 tspLemon juice
1/2TBGround Tumeric
1/2TBGaram Masala
1/2TBCumin
SAUCE
4TBunsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces and chilled, divided
1onion, chopped fine
5garlic cloves, minced
4tspgrated ginger
1serrano chile, stemmed, seeded, and minced
1TBgaram masala
1tspground coriander
1/2tspground coriander
1/2tspground cumin
1/2tsopepper
1 1/2cupswater
1/2cup tomato paste
1TBsugar
1tspsalt
1cup heavy cream
Instructions
Marinade
Whisk together the yogurt, lemon juice, turmeric, garam masala, and cumin in a large bowl.Put the chicken in and coat with the marinade. Cover and marinade chicken up to a day.
Sauce
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, ginger and serrano and cook, stirring frequently, until mixture is softened and onion begins to brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Add garam massala, coriander, cumin and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add water and tomato paste and whisk until no lumps of tomato paste remain. Add sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt and bring to boil. Off heat, stir in cream. Using immersion blender or blender, process until smooth, 30 to 60 seconds. Return sauce to simmer over medium heat and whisk in remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Remove saucepan from heat and cover to keep warm (Sauce can be refrigerated for up to 4 days; gently reheat sauce before adding hot chicken.)
Adjust oven rack 6 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Remove chicken from marinade and place on wire rack set over foil-lined baking sheet. Broil until chicken is evenly charred on both sides and registers 175º, 8 to 10 minutes per side.
Let chicken rest for 5 minutes. While chicken rests, warm sauce over medium-low heat. Cut chicken into ¾-inch chunks and stir into sauce. stir in 2 tablespoons cilantro and season with salt to taste. Transfer to serving dish, sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon cilantro and serve.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour muffin tins. Set aside
Cream butter sugars and extracts together for 1-2 minutes. This will be used for both the cookie bottom, as well as the topping.
Add in the flour and salt, and mix just until combined. The mixture will still be crumbly.
Scoop the mixture into each muffin well. Press into the bottom and up the sides a little, forming a well. Pressinto the pan, but do not over pack.
Scoop 1 tablespoon of jam into the center of each cookie.
Sprinkle each cookie with 1 heaping tablespoon of the remaining cookie mixture.
Bake for 18 minutes or until lightly browned.
Let cool completely, then remove from pans. You may need a knife to run around the edge to help in coping them out. These will freeze really well for up to 3 months.
Peel potatoes. Cut into quarters and place in a pot of water. Salt and bring to a boil.
Parboil potatoes for 10 minutes, drain allow to cool.
Grate cold potatoes. Whisk egg and add to grated potatoes, then sprinkle and toss with cornstarch. Place mounds of grated potatoes onto parchment covered cookie sheet and shape to the size and shape you prefer. Freeze for 1 hour.
Heat avocado oil in skillet, a couple inches deep. Bring oil up to frying temperature. Place frozen hash browns in pan and brown on both sides.
Once brown, cool on rack. These freeze well and only require a little bit of heating up for those dash and go days.
I’ve fished, mostly fly fishing, for more than sixty years. For fifty of those years any pattern tossed onto a lake or stream has been made in-house.
Fishing partners assess the Deschutes River.
This week I was reorganizing the space used to tie flies and pulled out a box of hooks that has been on hand from the start.
It may have been a week of cold weather battering old bones or this antique hook box, but either way this got me ruminating on my tying bench.
In this house winter doesn’t bring fishing to a complete halt, but it does limit time spent on the water. What replaces the actual fishing is fly tying. In all these years of stocking a bench, more gets added than is ever tossed.
A tying space is the equivalent to a garage work bench with its collection of old cans holding odd lots of hardware that might someday be useful.
The foundation to my tying bench is a roll top desk recovered from the Pastime Bar in Whitefish.
Though it has served in many capacities, the current iteration evolved from a couple of decades of reorganizations.
Every drawer and file slot holds fly tying materials.
On the slab of oak that tops the desk is a tying box my father built.
Above that are shelves with even more wooden boxes. All overflow with the bits and bobs necessary to craft trout lures.
A still life . . . tying stuff
The item that prompted this post was a tiny piece of wire sitting in a white cardboard box identified by Mustad-Viking Hooks in red ink and the number 94840 stamped in a different font.
A Sparkle Pupa pattern in Gary LaFontaine’s book “Caddisflies” calls specifically for this style of hook. However, you can’t find this component in most fly shops.
You see, Mustad isn’t the market leader they were when their signature cardboard box lined shelves in every shop.
In the years since I purchased these boxes, not only has the package changed, but the part number number has disappeared.
It didn’t matter to me nor would it to any tyer pulling a pattern from this book as fly tyers are notorious for making substitutions. Just like your father always had a bolt that would work.
LaFontaine’s Sparkle Pupa on a size 12 Mustad 94840
Fly patterns are intended to imitate a fish’s food sources which hasn’t changed.
Material storage in Earl’s tying box
However, the materials and methods are in constant motion, bringing new twists to ancient patterns. Tying a caddis pupa imitation to fish ahead of a hatch draws on hundreds of different patterns from years of knowledge.
My methods have evolved, yet still get pulled back to times when these old Mustad hooks were state of the art.
Hen capes for hackle feathers
As winter sets in, I scribble out a list aimed to replenish boxes depleted over a summer of fishing.
This year a variety of streamers will be tacked on because Small Mouth Bass got added to the hunted species list.
I’ll spend the next month or so building imitations of aquatic invertebrates to match the variety of hatches we’ll encounter. Some will end up catching fish, others will catch a rock or branch and become part of next year’s winter list.
Every year the process gets reset like the cycles I’m attempting to replicate.
Inevitably these cold snaps are followed by warming and an accompanying slush and flood cycle.
The foundation to my tying bench is a roll top desk recovered from the Pastime Bar in Whitefish.
On the slab of oak that tops the desk is a tying box my father built.
The item that prompted this post was a tiny piece of wire sitting in a white cardboard box identified by Mustad-Viking Hooks in red ink and the number 94840 stamped in a different font.
You see, Mustad isn’t the market leader they were when their signature cardboard box lined shelves in every shop.
